Victim in October attack remains hospitalized; defendant ordered to remain in jail until trial

The Northeast Washington woman who was stabbed and punched repeatedly in her face, hands, arms and legs by an attacker last month remains in a hospital after “multiple” operations, a D.C. police detective said Tuesday.

The woman was attacked Oct. 26 in her apartment in the 2300 block of Washington Place NE.

Myles is also charged with first-degree sexual abuse in a Nov. 2 attack on a Howard University student in her campus dormitory room.

At Tuesday’s hearing in D.C. Superior Court, Elbert Griffin, a detective with the D.C. police’s sexual-assault unit, reviewed 11 graphic photos of the woman and her apartment, its carpet and walls stained with blood. Griffin testified that the woman suffered several wounds in which her flesh was “cut down to the bone” and had several gashes on her face and arm.

The woman’s vision is also impaired because of the attack, Griffin said.

Myles showed little emotion during the hearing. When Griffin began testifying about the alleged sexual assault on the Howard campus, he smiled and shook his head.

After his arrest, Myles told detectives that he stabbed the Northeast woman because she resisted his attempt to rob her, according to police charging documents. “I didn’t mean to kill anyone,” he allegedly said. “I was just going to take what she had.”

Myles also told detectives that he did not sexually assault the student and that the sex was consensual, according to the charging documents.

The Howard student told police that Myles, whom she did not know, sat down in her dorm room. He later allegedly slapped her, pushed her onto her stomach, pulled out a bladed weapon and began sexually assaulting her.

When the woman yelled for him to stop, according to the charging documents, Myles grabbed a piece of paper, wrote a telephone number and the name “Marco” on it, and left.

The same weapon was used in the Northeast attack a week earlier, police said, and the knife and cellphone linked to the number written on the piece of paper were found in the home Myles shared with his mother.

Neither woman could identify their attacker, but the Howard student remembered his red, white and blue “Superman” underwear; at the time of his arrest, Griffin testified, Myles wore similar underwear.

Myles’s attorney, Liyah Brown of the District’s Public Defender Service, argued that the charge against Myles in the October attack should be reduced because he told detectives that he only meant to rob the woman.

She also argued that there was no evidence that the Howard student was raped and that the woman may have initially consented to an encounter with him.

Judge Robert E. Morin ruled that there was enough evidence to order Myles held in the D.C. jail until trial.